


Breakfast at the Schloss

by OldDVS



Category: Eroica Yori Ai o Komete | From Eroica with Love
Genre: M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-19
Updated: 2019-04-19
Packaged: 2020-01-16 14:34:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18523516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OldDVS/pseuds/OldDVS
Summary: Klaus reaches the point when he balks at his father's solution to a problem.  It's his father's problem but it solves a few for the son as well.





	Breakfast at the Schloss

**Author's Note:**

> Posted to Fried Potatoes in 2009

Breakfast at the Schloss  
By Tara Tory  
Added to Fried Potatoes on June 23, 2009

 

"I require something from you, Klaus."

Klaus von dem Eberbach watched his father begin his breakfast. They were alone in the blue breakfast room. A glance from the elder man had sent the servants scurrying away as soon as the food had been set out on the sideboard. Before he had even taken the first bite, the old man had said...that.

Klaus picked up his knife and sliced off a bite of bacon, sliding it into his mouth without much enthusiasm. Too crisp for his taste, but just as his father liked it. Of course. Klaus had been left in charge of the schloss almost eight years ago, when his father had retired. Yet every time the old man came back from his Swiss village, it was as if he had never left. As long as he was alive, the servants would consider the old man the true head of the household.

He was, of course. Even to Klaus. As Klaus made the decisions about the estate, he always heard a voice in his head, asking him how his father would want it done. When he knew the answer, he did it the way the old man had taught him. Only in new territory did he use his own judgment. 

He ate his potatoes and waited for his father to finish chewing and tell him more. There was something keeping the old man from addressing the problem immediately, and that was odd. His father had never been one to hold back an opinion, or put off an unwanted chore.

With a harumph which cleared his throat, the elder von dem Eberbach at last began to explain. "In the village, at the hotel. I go there to eat several times a week." The white hair of his father was highlighted by a tiny beam of sunlight that had found a way through the dark curtains. The old man frowned, annoyed. The butler slid into the room soundlessly, adjusted the curtain, and slipped out again. 

Klaus knew the hotel of which his father spoke, and so he nodded.

"There was a young woman there, a few years older than you. Of good family, but since the war, reduced to a lesser way of life. She is employed there. She lived with her parents until they died, and now she is alone. She is a beautiful woman, a good woman."

Hell. His father was trying to act as matchmaker again. Klaus scowled. He was not interested in marriage. His own father had not married young. It was ridiculous that he expected more from Klaus than he had from himself in that regard. Of course, the there was the intrusion of the war in his father's generation. An excuse. 

"Her name is Clara Koch."

Klaus went on chewing.

"She is charming, and she does not chatter. She understands."

Klaus blinked. Now it sounded like something else. He lifted his head and risked a glance across the table. Father looked nervous. He did not think he had ever seen his father with that expression before. Klaus took another bite and chewed his food well, as the nuns had taught him.

"Something unforeseen has occurred." There was a pause as his father took another bite. Really, it was as if he had something he was quite reluctant to bring up.

"Clara is...pregnant," his father finally announced.

Klaus almost choked. Only by sheer strength of will did he manage not to spray his food all over his plate. He put his fork down and swallowed, hard. Then he took the time to gulp a drink of his coffee. Looking at his father, who was staring intently down at his own cup, he took another big swallow. 

"Do you mean to say," Klaus finally managed, "that you...that you have...." He could not say it. He just could not. His father may have also been having difficulty using words at that moment, for his answer was a short, stiff, military-type nod.

A brother or sister for Klaus? No wonder the old man looked so strange. He wore a mix of embarrassment, a touch of male pride that he had accomplished such a thing at almost seventy years of age, and also there was a hint of...shame?

Klaus wondered if he should ask his father if he was sure that the child was his. How could he reasonably ask if someone was perpetrating a hoax on the old man, trying to get money from him, or trapping him into marriage? He did not quite dare. Besides, the man was not stupid and he himself had warned Klaus of this sort of trap, many years ago. 

"I am too old to marry and raise another family," his father announced. "I have decided that you shall marry Clara."

"Sir?" A freezing sort of horror was marching up and down in Klaus's gut. "Sir!" he said again, as he became sure of the man's meaning. "You can't possibly mean that you expect me to marry your mistress!"

"Why not? You've found no one. You've not even tried, confess it! You show no interest in doing your duty to your family. You are in a dangerous profession, and yet you put it off again and again!"

"I have not found the right person." Klaus said stiffly.

"So you say. Certain rumors have traveled to me. Concerning your attentions to a beautiful blonde. Who is not a woman," the old man pointed out.

Klaus sat up straight and fought his outrage. "It is not true! I have never touched a man, never done...that!"

"Have you done it with a woman?" his father asked, almost growling out the words. His wrinkled face turned a little pink with embarrassment. 

"Yes!" He could say that, at least. He'd done it a dozen times. At first, with the guilty conscience of a Catholic school boy, he had gone with his friends to certain establishments. Later, with the intensity of a man who is sure that eventually he would find the combination that would work for him, he had experimented. So he had bedded a couple of sturdy, laughing country lasses, and several sleek and elegant city girls. There had been the lovely Korean woman at a conference in France and the charming French woman a dozen years his elder that he had met in Spain. The last woman he had taken to his bed had been a simpering idiot with long gold curls and a fresh English complexion. Even he had been aware of what was behind that mistake but the encounter had been as much of a miserable failure as the others. He scowled remembering it.

His father eyed him doubtfully. Klaus made the effort to smooth his expression into his usual neutral belligerence. 

"Well, it does not matter. You will marry the girl."

"Oh? And shall we share her, then?" Klaus asked sarcastically. He was amazed that he dared to use that tone with his father. 

"No. No, she will be your wife. I will respect that."

"Have you even consulted the young lady?" Klaus asked. He no longer had a taste for food and set his knife and fork down with careful precision.

"She has agreed. It would be best for the child."

That stung. Did his father not notice that he was implying that his concern was for the new child, and that he apparently did not care what aggravation he brought to his older child?

"The child and the mother will stay here at the schloss, of course. She will be a good mother and wife, I am sure. It neatly solves the problem of your heir," the man pointed out.

"Most men would prefer to provide their own heir," Klaus said, in a cold, even voice. 

His father did not acknowledge that. Klaus finished his coffee in silence, thinking furiously, and only spoke when the old man precisely placed his fork and knife on his plate and prepared to stand. Klaus lifted a hand to indicate he should stay, and his father gave him an annoyed look but settled back down in the chair and waited for him to speak, his expression impatient.

"I will not marry your mistress," Klaus announced in a determined, flat tone as he set aside his napkin. The fury was rising on the old man's face, but he ignored it as he continued. "She is your responsibility. The child is your responsibility. You are the one who has been in her bed, and you are the one who can do the right thing. You can not pass *this* obligation on to me."

Klaus leaned back, studying the man with intent green eyes. "I see no reason to allow you to make the lives of everyone involved miserable. I can't imagine that poor woman wants to be handed over to me like a dish of cabbage. However, I agree that an heir is needed, at least until I marry and produce my own. The child will do, assuming it proves to be healthy and mentally competent. The child will live with you and the mother." Klaus made it an irrefutable statement. His father looked like he was going to protest but by talking more quickly, Klaus did not allow him to speak.

"Of course a child would get on your nerves in the small cottage you have. Get a larger house, for a few years, and a nurse or nanny for the baby. In that way, you will be able to see as much of the child as you care to, the same as you did during my childhood. When the child is of age for school, send him to me. I will begin training him, or her, as you trained me, to care for the land and learn the obligations that go with this legacy. He or she will go to good schools and spend the school holidays here. In the summer he can go back to his mother, and to you, if that is your wish. 

"Should something happen to you, you will be assured that I will assume a responsibility for my sibling and his mother. My brother or sister will be safe under my care."

"Kl...."

Klaus cut off the roar which was erupting from his father's mouth by raising his own voice, but he had no anger or hysteria in his tone, only the sheer power of conviction. "I am NOT going to marry that woman! I can quote you the dozens of lectures you gave me on the subjects of male behavior and responsibility, should you wish it. Verbatim." He watched his father dredge up the memory of those lectures and smiled as his father frowned and looked away. 

It was a heady feeling. He had seldom crossed his didactic father in any way; the man had always had the moral high ground, experience, age and position, to use against his son. Klaus had sometimes been able to use logic and good sense to talk his father around to a new point of view, but he had never, he realized, ever been in the position of an equal. Or of a superior.

His father again opened his mouth as if to speak, and then said nothing.

Klaus waited a few more seconds, more amazed as every long moment passed and he realized that he had won. He had won this argument. A twist of guilt touched his stomach. It wasn't right that he should win an argument with his father, that his father should back down from him. 

It wasn't right, but it felt good.

"Humph!" the old man said with bad grace. 

In this quiet moment when they were not talking, the butler appeared, filled their coffee cups, collected some of the dishes and vanished again. 

"I will attend the wedding, if you would like me to do so. Given the circumstances, perhaps a small wedding in her town?" Klaus suggested it while keeping an eye on the other. This was the sort of statement that often resulted in loud disagreement. "You will notify me in time to request the time off?"

To his continued surprise, the old man gave a stiff nod.

Klaus nodded back. He took a sip of the coffee, judged it still too hot, and waited for it to cool. The silence was quite odd. It gave Klaus time to think. The revelations coming were most startling. He realized that although he had been ostensibly in charge for all these years, only now did he realize that there had always been the thin shell of his father's will over every aspect of the place. The very stones had been attuned to his father, but now, all at once...

...they were not. The schloss, the position as the master of it, was his own. 

He brooded on this for just the amount of time it took for the coffee to cool, and then he took a drink, and then another. His father sat in the chair opposite, heavy introspection evident on his face also. Yes, his father had much to think about. 

Klaus had more.

It felt as if was only now an independent adult. Was his fate, at last, in his own hands?

It appeared so, because the Thing He Never Thought About was hovering in his mind, a presence growing in his consciousness. The heir problem was solved. He didn't have to find a bride and provide his own issue. He could...in his mind's eye there were lips near his. Laughing red lips, below blue eyes, surrounded by a wealth of tumbling yellow curls. The lips were touching his, he was pulling the wiry strong body under him and he took a deep breath and reined in the thought because, after all, his father was still sitting in the chair across the table. 

But Klaus smiled. It was a small, pleased smile, quite unlike any which had ever sat upon his face. His father looked at him and frowned. Klaus did not even notice.


End file.
